Our National Drug - A Rant

"Our national drug is alcohol.
We tend to regard the use any other drug with special horror. "
William S. Burrows

(Thanks, SoberMusicians for the quote of the day)

I'm speaking at another town hall meeting in April. I fell asleep thinking about it, if only because it was the thing least likely to cause stress or cause me to jump up out of bed, full of inspiration begging to be captured. No, I just turned things over in my head, thought back to the last two town hall meetings, and tried to approach it from a different angle. I think I'll actually use notes this year.

The topic, by the way, is underage drinking. It's always the topic. This is rural Pennsylvania. One graduates very quickly from Pin the Tail on the Donkey (do kids still play that?) to Find the Keg in the Woods. Or, as I hear these days, Find the Right Road to Camp. With all we know about underage drinking, parents are still offering "safe places" to drink as an alternative to their kids so that maybe they'll avoid a serious drug problem in said kids.

The local police logs are full of reports detailing minors charged with "disorderly conduct." I understand, as one of my colleagues informed me, that this is code for underage drinking. Charging a drunken teenager with disorderly conduct serves two purposes: 1) it let's the cop play good guy (or girl, as the case may be), as a disorderly conduct charge does not bring with it loss of driving privileges, and 2) fines from disorderly conduct remain in the municipality, while underage drinking fines are dispersed between county and municipality, or something like that. I understand the concept, so I didn't take notes.

As a sober alcoholic whose past "special treatment" helped me to avoid some unpleasant consequences that, by virtue of their absence, damned near killed me, I'm opposed to anything that allows someone consuming the drug alcohol from avoiding those consequences. Were my kids to be caught drinking, I would expect that they be charged, even if that means money out of my pocket. I have ways of getting it back.

But! you say, Kids will be kids! And alcoholism is a disease! Of course, and what better teaching aid than discomfort? And no alcoholic I have ever met has sought help without the aid of pain to convince that alcoholic that help was necessary.

In an ideal world, there wouldn't be such things that can be substituted for the experience of authentic existence. I'm pretty radical on that point, and I'll reign it in for the moment and just say that -- if we are not at the point where we are ready to educate our society, aid the enlightenment of our society, if we must have these substances available for the pseudo-sophisticates who claim consumption as their right, then let's not forget that alcohol is every bit the drug that heroin or cocaine is. We wouldn't scold a house full of I.V. drug users and send them home to mom and dad. Kegger or a crack pipe, there's no difference.

Till later...